Mad Catz Tried Making the Ultimate FPS Controller: Panther XL from 1997
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- čas přidán 18. 06. 2024
- Checking out the odd Panther XL by Mad Catz! While they largely made goofy third party game console controllers, they also made goofy PC hardware. Like this trackball and flight stick fused together supposedly creating the ultimate FPS input device, backed up by radical 1990s John Romero magazine ads. Prime LGR Oddware indeed!
● LGR links:
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
● An archive of the Panther XL CD-ROM here:
archive.org/details/panther-x...
● All background music licensed from:
www.epidemicsound.com
00:00 An Oddware Introduction
00:38 The Panther XL
02:56 FPgaming 'Assassin 3D' stuff
03:40 Mad Catz sure was a company
04:47 Advertising and John Romero
05:39 The cult following is real
06:38 Unboxing the device
08:41 Plugged in and setting it up
11:01 Jedi Knight Dark Forces II
13:59 Turok Dinosaur Hunter
15:54 Unreal Tournament 1999
18:27 Control Center and Quake II
20:12 Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator
21:48 A3D Mouse Emulation mode
22:21 Solitaire and SimCity 2000
23:28 DOS support, Commander Keen 4
24:31 Duke Nukem 3D of course
27:54 Y'know, I almost like it! Almost.
#LGR #retro #gaming #controller #oddware - Věda a technologie
I love how it says "Duke Forever" on the supported games list.
Such simpler times.
I bet 3D Realms actually was planning to support it at the time, even.
Well someone needs to take the Steam version of Duke Forever and see if it works.
@@TheSonicseanOr even better, the leaked 2001 version
@@TheSonicseanDo not mention the 2011 duke forever
I need a time machine to tell my childhood self "Don't worry about not owning the cool things you see in magazine ads. Someday you'll get to enjoy them vicariously through your favourite CZcamsr"
Ha!
"Also, most of them are actually really silly"
@@BlackMageJawahaha indeed, but at the same time such crazy good times given the amount of crazy new stuff that was always showing up in this area (specially games, they were so different from each other).
"Don't worry about not owning the cool things you see in magazine ads. Someday you'll get to enjoy them by buying them online for next to nothing because it sucked and everyone forgot about it to the dustbin of history"
@@MrWolfSnack "Or they become highly sought after and their rarity drives up the price ridiculously, especially once they end up in a video by someone like LGR."
Ahh, the late 90s fall-to-death animation where the character plummets hundreds of feet, comes to a stop on his or her feet, and slowly collapses as if they've passed out. Classic!
You can pretty much do that in cyberpunk 2077 lol
With games like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Half-Life, the player would plain rupture into a spray of giblets when hitting the ground, much like they'd have been shot with a rocket launcher or blown up with a bundle of dynamite.
And takes the time to turn off his lightsaber just before collapsing.😂
I wish wacky joystick content like this was more prevalent on CZcams retro tech channels. We had so many interesting control devices in the mid 90s and early 2000s.
Aside from console controllers at the time yeah. I remember a lot of unique controller designs from Mad Katz for the PS1 alone
Become that CZcamsr and join the likes of LGR in content creation!
Really did. It was like companies were assuming either flight sims would take over the world. Though I guess at that point console controllers hadn't been terribly analog and hadn't shown everyone what a way smaller stick could do when paired with a bunch of buttons that aren't mounted atop it.
Only, or very much mostly, in USA, not Europe, much less northern Europe like Finland. Not that money was exactly plentiful, though, and shit was so expensive it was (read: shoulda been) illegal.
Such an oddly specific desire... and one I completely agree with 😂
I have 2 in my basement, waiting for a usb conversion for quite some time now. Played for YEARS UT99 on one. I still swear this is and always will be the best controler i have ever used in my life. Also keep in mind when this was released, keyboards had 3 key limit and were, as today, digital, so no minor movement. The trackball was the biggest selling point because you could keep the sensitivity reallyyy low and just yolo it to a side to make a 180, but still have precise movement when aiming. Thanks for the video, this reminded me i have to bump the guy doing conversions to have one on USB and enjoy the good ol days again.
I agree.
What about the rubber degradation?
@@d.r.1402 honestly i havent checked on them in a while, but was still fine. If need be, i'll just 3d print new ones or improvise otherwise.
Yep... Mine died but I used it for the Mechwarrior games up to and including Mechwarrior Online just a couple years ago via a gameport to USB adapter. It was just about the perfect controller for that. Joystick controlled the legs, trackball controlled torso twisting and arm movement. It was fantastic.
The limit on the number of simultaneous key presses is, and always has been, down to the design of the particular keyboard model. The cheapest ways of designing a keyboard also tend to be ones that put strict limits on simultaneous key-presses. Even the more costly approaches can still be restrictive. Just because a keyboard has been built with individual switches doesn't mean it'll be good at registering lots of simultaneous key-presses.
The IBM Model F that came with the original PC could handle any number of simultaneous key-presses just due to how its key-sensing mechanism works. The later Model M, which everybody loves, uses a different and simpler mechanism that is less-capable, and which in a worst-case scenario, can only register two simultaneous presses.
In general, capacitive mechanisms (such as the Model F and Topre) can handle any number of presses, as can Hall-effect mechanisms. Contact-based mechanisms, such as membranes and discrete switches are usually limited. Discrete-switch designs _can_ support any number of presses if the designers add diodes in series with the switches (or use switches that have built-in diodes), but that obviously makes it more expensive.
And that's just due to handling the mechanism. Many USB keyboards have a 6-key limit due to how they implement the protocol and only use the most basic and compatible version of it. Ones with a better implementation will switch to a more-capable variation once they finish dealing with the BIOS.
There was never a time period when there was a specific key limit. There's always been a variety of options on that front. There still is, and I don't see it going away any time soon. Mostly due to companies being cheap.
I had the Dreamcast version, and it was amazing for Quake 3.
pa dreamcast pa dreamcast 64 se nota que nadie le gusto el control de sega porque le falta 2 joysticks en ves de uno que la compania cometio ese error del mal diseño del control para juegos shooter de primera persona y en tercera en la mira
Same here!
The blue and white looks amazing
I still have the Dreamcast version, and you're right. Once you get used to the layout and buttons, it's pretty good for FPSs. At least for those that don't have a keyboard and mouse for the Dreamcast.
Same here but I prefer DC mouse & keyboard
The Panther trackball with a joystick was awesome. As a lefty, it was a great FPS gaming setup. It was just load a game and start playing. No need to rebind for left hand controls.
Oh man, LGRs video are my feel-good-space...these jazz tunes, soothing voice and the well researched, super interesting contents on a Saturday morning with a fresh cup of coffe just gives me a positive goosebumps.
LGR, you've come a long way since you started and with those steps of improvement that you have with every single video you built this awesome Saturday morning space, that noone and nothing can penetrate. I'd sincerely thank you for your highly appreciated work!
I’m glad it’s appreciated, thank you!
Yeah, it feels like this Saturday morning relaxed conversation about tech with a cool friend in your cozy home office space before booting some retro games to play a bit before lunch. Your videos are just so great and relaxing indeed! Thank you!
Had one and played so many hours of Descent / Descent 2 with it! Perfect pairing, was a joy~
Teenaged me in 1997 would have envied you! All we did in the computer lab was play D2 CTF for hours lol
Heh, I see what you did there🎉
@@benjamingarrett1175 Overload for PC is a 6DOF shooter similar to Descent released 2018; it's by the creators of Descent and looks like it could be good; might be worth a look
Man I can imagine how sick playing Descent would be with that thing
@@JadeEyedWolf Lol nice👍
Man the 90s rocked. Now, we just get mice and keyboards but they cost $200 each
racing wheels got crazy expensive too
I'm just glad we don't have to deal with a hundred different GamePort protocols anymore. USB is nice.
@@renakunisakiToo bad that anything more advanced that a basic and/or nobody-brand keyboard and/or mouse requires its own driver/software suite again now.
It surprises me that Mad Catz went from concept to production, and at no point did anybody think to flip the trackball to the right side.
It should've been detachable so you could move it to the left or right depending on your preferences.
They likely assumed that, most people being right-handed, that most gamers would use the joystick in their right hand.
I agree with the other guy, though: making it hot-swappable would have been better.
Flight stick prioritizes the right hand side, while FPS demands the exact opposite.
It would've involved a left handed flightstick so they would need to design and make unique parts for the entire left side. While 70 bucks is a big ask making something more expensive and which needed to sell more units is insane.
Controllers always have the D-pad on the left and mice are mostly used on the right. Somehow they decided to put the mouse control on the left and the D-pad equivalent control on the right, making it wrong for both controller users AND mouse users at the same time.
You had me at Mad Catz. "Mad Catz: It won't be good... but it will look cool. Official controller of 'you tried it once and now make your little brother use it in 2-player' ". :P
Well, this is a great example of how a good product can seem clunky when we change our controls usage in-game😄
You struggling with it reminds me of about every time I play an old game with non-standard control schemes (switching between newer and older RTS games for example)
I love LGR’s channel because it’s like Duke Nukem is narrating them. It’s like Duke Nukem is teaching me about awesome nastalgia-wear & Goodwill Thrifts.
“IT’S TIME TO SHOW ODD WARE MAIL AND CHEW BUBBLE GUM, & I’M ALL OUT OF BUBBLE GUM!”
Honestly, my first thought when saw it was "why isn't the trackball on the right" which it seems like would make sense since you also mentioned that most games nowadays do looking on the right and movement on the left. Then again, this was 1998, so we hadn't quite figured out how 3D games and 3D movement should be handled yet anyway.
I had one and with the joystick in right hand, trackball in left hand actually feels more natural than you would think
@@LowSpecLinuxLaptopYeah, I can't imagine trying to use a full joystick with my left. I'm sure you could get used to it, but not ideal.
Personally, my perspective on the matter is that the ship had already sailed; Quake I came out around a year and five months before this, and that was the game where WASD+mouse became a standard through its competitive community. You know, a control scheme where (for rightys) movement is on the left hand and aiming on the right. Not to mention that tons of arcade games at this point had put the joystick in your left hand, and while most of them weren't like FPSes that's still a precedent for movement being the domain of the left hand.
You're not _wrong,_ in that it did take a while for everyone to see the light, but the way I see it is that we were eventually going to go down this route, and those joystick/gamepad manufacturers and game developers who didn't see it were making mistakes even if they didn't realize it at the time.
@@LonelySpaceDetective I mean, the d-pad on controllers was and still is on the left as well. I can see some logic with it, albeit it's still kinda funky looking at it 25 years later
@@Myriadys The d-pad did come to mind as I was writing that, but to be fair Nintendo were following what arcade machines did at the time.
Definitely odd !
Makes me remember a specific LAN Party. We saw a friend setting up his PC and connecting a Wingman something.
What ? He intends to play Duke with that ? Ah ah ah, we will destroy him !
We all got destroyed at a level we never encountered before and after ! Can't imagine the training behind ...
Friend of mine back in 2001 or so praised the hell out of the PantherXL that he had before we met. When he got another, he paid way to much for one off ebay. Then broke it within a week heh.
My fave old school PC controller was the 3Dfx Hammerheadfx. Loved that thing back in the day.
The saving grace to this would be whether or not you can fully swap those directional functions in the settings.
The fact the trackball lights up sells it to me, I want one, even if I only have one, sporadically working computer it'd be vaguey useful on
I'm wondering if it's possible to have an illuminated trackball with an optical sensor. They're infrared, so in theory it could work? Maybe blue would be less likely to interfere?
Man....it's been nearly 20 years since I've last played The Grid in my local mall Aladdin's Castle. Pretty much the first thing that came in mind when seeing that controller despite the opposite controls.
I still have a few of these. It was actually awesome for Quake back in the day. It was supposed to come out for Xbox but never saw the light of day.
You're not alone as even though I'm left handed I've always used my trackballs and mice with my right hand. So this would be really odd for me as well.
Always like the 80s and 90s box. So colourful and exciting.😊
Imagine someone deciding "high sensitivity and inverted is the only way" and then you just have to live with that
Using IPA to treat the sticky rubber helps. Takes a few applications. Not a 100% option but it does help on some of the devices I've used it on
Two niche but standard controllers merged into an odd combination. This reminds me of a time when I built a 'Mech controller for my brother by combining a Thrustmaster joystick for main controls, a mechanic numpad for additional keys and a USB hub to keep the wiring inside in a single painted sheet metal enclosure. You can make all kinds of weird controller combos if you have a specific use-case in mind. Not sure why you'd make a new controller for FPS games in general though - nothing beats k&m in that arena.
Finally!
I still have both Panther XL and Panther DC controllers. The PXL I bought came with the standard release of Half-Life. I think you can still get the PC version modded to optical, USB, and have the wiring harness replaced. PC games that support analog movement will take advantage of the joystick. I played through Mechwarrior 3 on one of these. I found it a more intuitive way of moving one direction and aiming/looking another. I remember getting the software setup being a pain and I had to muck around with DLLs to get it to work.
I played hundreds of hours in UT with this controller.
Oh cool, it's my two least favourite PC inputs stuck together! As a lefty, I hate joysticks being in the right hand as it is, and having the left/right hand controls flipped from modern controls by default just makes that even worse. But I love seeing all of these crazy attempts at controllers.
Looks like your regular Elite Dangerous controller
I need to play that more... It does vaguely look like a HOTAS though, just.. with a trackball.
@@AmetistiHands on Trackball and Stick 😂
Reading that back I'm glad it is only one (Track)ball.
@puschelhornchen9484 dang, you remember that one type of mouse that had the massive trackball in the middle, with the mouse buttons on the sides? Lol
My dad loved that thing for some reason lol
@@cowgoesmoo3850 lol wasn't that for kids? 😅 it was so clunky to navigate 😅
>sees Mad Catz
>claims to be the "Ultimate FPS Controller"
Hell yeah, this is gonna be a treat.
"Blue ball" and "clean ball day "....this type of content is why I continue to love this channel.
Oddware is the best ware. Fantastic video, Clint. Thanks my dude for all you do.
the hands being reversed reminds me of the Dreamcast, which only had one analog stick, on the left side. Precise aiming was way more important than precise movement, so shooter games would always use the left stick for aiming, and ABXY for movement! I eventually did get used to it but it takes a while.
It's been so long since I've seen LGR.
I've been so busy with work. It feels good relaxing and watching his videos. 😌👍💯
This is such a very great demonstration technology video that I ever watch today!
I love that box it comes in. so 90s. Somehow it reminds me of the ads for the sega saturn console ads or the sega (i think) ad with the boys head, but the top of his head is a hand grappling either a sega nomad, a gamegear, or a sega controller.
Why do i keep forgetting how much i love this channel?
The Mad Catz mini controllers I still use for my GameCube. All of them were actually really well made and fit my hands waaaaaaay better than the normal ones.
I totally had this. If I left it plugged in and left my computer on, it would light my dorm room up bright red at night, with the LED's blasting through that red orb. I distinctly remember playing Star Wars: Rogue Squadron with it! Great video.
I can imagine a reality show being made out of MadCatz where absolutely bonkers gaming devices are placed before a panel for manufacturing.
But ALL applicants somehow win.
It's like Mel Brook's The Producer where the main characters try to make a flop (Springtime for Hitler) but made a hit instead. Similar plot.
Fantastic episode and really enjoyable :) One could feel your inverted and not inverted pain...
I think this is my first time seeing an LGR video the day it was released!! So excited :D
MadCatz: the official controller of younger siblings everywhere
Always struck me that DOOM launched with modern FPS control support out of the box but it took over 5 years before people realized using a flight stick as a mouse wasn't the wisest move, funny how these things work
The reason it seems so weird to you is because you're wrong. Doom didn't launch with with modern FPS control support out of the box. Original doom used the mouse for forward and backwards movement and didn't support looking up and down, and the side arrow keys turned left and right instead of strafing. You could play Doom with only the mouse, apart from switching weapons. Modern doom remakes have adopted the control scheme of newer FPS games retrospectively.
It wasn't until well after the launch of Quake that mouse look and WASD became the standard.
@@theParticleGod But you can remap the controls in the original DOOM to WASD and mouse. The only odd thing is vertical mouse movement is bound to forward and back so you need something like novert to cancel that out.
@@russelltennant5642 Doom didn't "launch with modern FPS control out of the box", which is what you said. Now you're talking about configuration changes and third party applications to block vertical mouse movement.
I never saw or even heard of anybody using WASD and mouse in Doom until years after launched, it wasn't as though that control scheme was well known and people just didn't use it. WASD literally wasn't a thing until people started winning Quake tournaments using it.
I love the Oddware series. Thanks, Clint!
Would probably make a good MAME stick, even if playing Afterburner would tip the thing over. Epic Centipede action, though.
I had these PantherXL’s including the one for the Sega Dreamcast. I swore by them, and did custom mods to them by replacing the trackball innards with a USB mouse innards. After the drivers and gameport stopped being supported, the community replaced the PantherXL with a Kensington USB trackball and a CH Products Fighterstick USB. The reason for the joystick instead of a keyboard is because the joystick gives you easy access to many buttons while still being able to move your character. The joystick also gives you access to analog movement while a keyboard only gives you digital movement. In my view the keyboard and mouse ruined gaming by taking analog movement away from gaming. Even now with gamepad controllers having analog joysticks, very few games support analog movement, all because of the popularity of the keyboard for PC users.
As a note of interest, the now famous Joe Rogan used a PantherXL to win some FPS tournaments back in the day.
Woot. Had this one. Loved it. Used it a lot for x-wing vs tie fighter
god I love your oddware videos. I feel like it's been a while, but I'm too lazy to go check. Anyway thanks good sir. I remember seeing this (or something very similar) in the stores and thought who would possibly want that????
-Mat Catz-
Well, with those freaks in the title - you know we're in for a crazy time
Hot stuff. Sensational. Thanks for the presentation.
I recently got myself a Sidewinder FF2 for use in Combat Flight Simulator and Sturmovik. In Win 11 is just plug and play.
what a delightful piece of oddware
Always thought these kind of things were a weird design might be cool if they had an ambi design where the trackball part can be moved to the left or right side of the stick.
But then you'd have a left-hand joystick and that's also very odd.
@@catfish552 sticks can be configureable to be left or right handed, like tbe T16000M from thrustmaster for example. Or be made ambidexturous. Twinstick setups are not uncommon.
07:52 dude I love doing that raspy stone cold voice it's hilarious
I'm glad to hear that after all these years Clint still cleans his ball bay every so often.
The delivery on "there's our ball" at 7:51 is so beyond excellent. Beautiful stuff
Ive been watching this channel for years. How have I never seen those green key caps? I lOVE the look.
I owned one until a few years ago. With regular maintenance and some modding to get it working for current gen stuff, it is the best controller ever made by human hands. Fight me.
Also, they did do a good fair amount of updates to the software for the controller for various games. I played the hell out of Aliens Vs. Predator online, and wrecked so many faces as the alien, because of this controller, and even used it to play American McGees Alice. I am not sure when the last update for it was, but I recall it getting updates until at least 2003.
I loved that late 90's era of thinking joysticks would be a great way to play FPS games. How wrong we were
Yeah, thank god for flight sims. Without those we wouldn't have any sticks left.
The thing is, they were sort of right...
Console controllers essentially contain two very small analogue joysticks, and if you look at how the buttons are laid out by the right-hand stick, it's really not that dissimilar to the panther model.
Definitely ahead of its time, but a sign of things to come, at least on console.
Maybe not the most optimal way but I can imagine how fun mecha games would be with a dual flight stick setup
@@FateBringsMe2U Steel Battalion would be the bunny for you, then!
@@peterclarke7240 Console controllers are a sub-optimal way of playing FPS compared to mouse and keyboard, even with analog sticks.
That's why most people prefer FPS on PC, and mouse and keyboard mods even exist for a few console FPS like Metroid Prime.
Okay, the illuminated track ball is awesome.
Was on a Oddware marathon… funny timing!
I remember seeing this on the shelves at Fry's and wanted one. Never got around to buying it. The classic original Sidewinder carried me through many Mechwarrior titles well into the 2000s. Twisting for torso twist blew my mind.
From what I remember from using it for a summer, this thing was pretty excellent for Mechwarrior 2 and Frontier: Elite 2, both benefiting from the trackball-joystick combo.
But I seem to recall making it work properly was huge pain.
I actually have pretty fond memories of Mad Catz products. Had an og Xbox Mad Catz controller which I preferred over the Duke controller I had. Had a fightpad by them, my first good arcade/fight stick was one of theirs and my first gaming PC back in 2013, I had a STRIKE 7 keyboard and RAT 9 mouse.
I still have the RAT 7 and the Cyborg V7 stored in a box of random old PC stuff. The look of their stuff really was something but I do remember quite liking it back in the day.
@@92Hidden Oh yeah, the Cyborg v7, I have my one of those still too. But mine is Saitek branded.
Oh man, I would love to see you build the Romero-Machine at 5:15
That bit with UT really takes me back. I need to play it some more, but I've been spending more time in U1 because I really like doing the main missions coop style over the internet. I've actually got a MadCatz XBox wireless micro-con that I still use from time to time even now. People talked so much trash about MadCatz products, but what I've had has been solid for years.
We had one of these on a pc at the day care I went to in 98. I was pretty young so I had to wait for the older kids to get there time with it first. One day i finally got my chance to play about 15 mins of Star Wars Dark Empire. I was simply blow away this was so cool. Im sure its just nostalgia but ill never forget that the look of this thing. It's what comes to mind anytime i think of a pc joystick. Thank you LGR for featuring this peace of tech form a time long gone. 😊
I had one of these! Once I got used to the set up it worked really well.
I get it with that almost 30 years of gaming muscle memory. I had to get a NSO 64 dedicated controller with all the classic N64 face buttons because my darn muscle memory couldn't wrap around the pro controller re-mappings / combo's.
Back in the day we had one of these and it didn't take a lot of getting used to for us. It's actually really nice feeling when you get used to it. We used it mostly for UT99, but I remember playing other games with it too.
I bought a Wingman Warrior back in the day. It's been languishing since support was dropped for it in Windows and then technology moved on. That one plugged into the old serial port for the spinner and the gameport for the joystick.
I had that when it was brand new! I remember playing Unreal with it on my pII 400 that had a Voodoo 3 3000 and a SB Gold Live!
Friend had this, and the Assassin Trackball. Back in the day playing death match quake and original Team Fortress...he had it dialed. Was tough to beat.
Would have loved this back in the day when flight sims started to have so advanced graphics that you could use the mouse to look around with. Maybe I still would...
This thing would make such perfect sense if it was mirrored, using the stick for moving and the trackball for looking.
Oh man, you totally got a typical left-handed-person experience there 😅. This is clearly a good product for us lefties: mouse on the left, keys on the right.
Awesome vid. When I was a teenage kid I really wanted to get one of these joysticks.. though cyberman was just a notch higher on that list...
This thing brings back memories for my early quake days but over time found the trackball sensitivity not as good as a decent mouse especially during online matches so switched back to the keyboard and mouse.
I modded mine and put optical mouse guts under the ball. Sand the ball and pinpoint accuracy. =)
Hey! Finally an oddware thing I had as a kid! Never used it for any shooters, but as a trailer park kid, it was great for all the flight sims I could get my hands on. Worked flawlessly with the Real Flight demo, though if I remember correctly it took a lot of configuration to get it to work with the version of Microsoft Flight Simulator my uncle passed down to me. Wish I still had it, honestly.
Never seen this one before in my life. Wild.
I never had one, but I did get fully used to using a Microsoft Sidewinder as a controller for Unreal and a few other games, for a bit. I even used it as a mouse for a very short period of time
I still have my dad's old panther-xl. When I was younger and learned windowsXp very well I managed to get the drivers working and played quake 2 and a few others and I fell inlove instantly. My dad told me many stories playing games in the 90s along with Delta Force. I still have all these years later... But wanting to get it out again to figure out how to make it work on win10. It was the only joystick that you didn't just have to play flight sims. It's awesome for fps games... I'm Soo happy to see this review for good ole mad catz. RIP pops🤘🏻🤘🏻. (4/3/23)
Excellent pen selection at 2:51. I knew there was a reason I liked you. ;)
4:28 I did not expect to hear LGR say "blue balled version" today, but here we are. Cheers!
Clint you know way more about restoring and using these old things than I do, but about the rubber degradation on the buttons. I was told that is oil from people’s hands that comes out over time and does that. I used rubbing alcohol to clean it off an old PS3 controller that was tacky as all get out and it has stayed perfect since. Maybe you’re running into a different type of decomposition but I thought I’d mention it.
I used to use a Microsoft Commander. It was a generation after this. It was USB and it looked like a huge mouse but it didn't function like one. It took the place of the keyboard in a mouse keyboard combo. The whole top moved, basically like a four way hat.. and that was for movement. And you could twist for turning. And it had several finger and thumb buttons along with macro abilities. It was designed for fps and rts usage and I loved it, lol. Tho it was cheaply made and never really caught on and was also way too expensive. I mean it was literally several finger and thumb buttons and a cheap plastic mechanical set up for six more buttons (four for wsad, two for q,e turning) and it was fairly huge. But for what it was, it was actually a great idea of the bunch I thought, just poor execution and marketing..
Half the fun with playing with computers is the stuff you put your phalanges on!
This is the equivalent of tying your shoes with a fork and pliers instead of using your hands.
What a analogy
As a Southpaw gamer made by the N64 and used to inverted controls I'd love to try that thing!
Clan A3D was dedicated to the use of this product (mostly). I still use a modified version. [A3D]Steveo replaced the trackball with a new USB mouse and a USB model makes the joystick interface as a keyboard.
I had the same problem with Quake III on the Dreamcast. The action buttons were the back forward and strafe and the thumb stick was for looking direction. It messes with your mind after going back to it once you get used to the stock controller config in Halo.
I'm glad you took out the Romero ad and maybe you should use your Duke voice more.
This is the only PC gaming joystick I have used in my 40+ years on this planet that I will swear by. It had a bit of a learning curve, and I almost returned it -- but decided to stick it out. I won more online UT99 matches with this bad-boy than I did with the KB+M. There were definitely some tricks you could pull with the trackball + stick given some practice, like precise 180 degree jump strife weapon swap shots. Sure you could do that with a KB+M too, but I found it flowed much better with this joystick.
It also allowed a friend of mine, who until this point wasn't much of a gamer, to finally enjoy them. His hand would cramp on the KB+M, so he was never interested. But the Panther XL had him playing the hell out of the FPS games of the era. He called it "the arm."
There was definitely something magical about the Panther XL. It got so much use the stick broke twice, and MatCatz repaired it the first time. The second time they sent me components that simply didn't fit -- and that was the end of my Panther XL experience. For years I searched for a suitable replacement, but none were ever found. As I grew older I stopped caring, and the idea of something so large on my desk for video games lost its appeal. But once upon a time, I would have taken this joystick over any other input method for PC FPS games.
God I loved those Romero ads. Actually reason that I wanted both the sticks he did ads for.
never seen or had one of these, but I had, actually still have, a Logitech Wingman Force, which worked... sort of okay. Being a first generation force feedback stick it had its issues, like the FF used steel cables for extra force, which means you can turn it up so high it's impossible to move the stick, and the vibration so hard it'd shake apart an Ikea desk, besides all the motors and cables pullies made it one chunky MFer that impossible to use comfortably.
I used to use Mouse + Stick for FPS games, a few games supported annaloge movment speed for forward,back and sidestep so you got some extra control out of it.
I could see the appeal of Stick + Trackball too but I agree that in every consevable instance you would just be better with seperate devices, especially as the trackball could just work as your mouse too.
MadCatz will always be special to me because before Microsoft realized how absurdly large their original XBox controller was, Mad Catz had a well made (for Mad Catz) reasonably sized one. For quite a while it was actually player ONE controller! Then Microsoft put out the S controller and it became player two.
Combat Flight Simulator was my jam as a teenager, love that game.
I went to a couple of the big Bastard's Beat Down LAN parties out in LA somewhere around the turn of the century. There, I saw a dude absolutely *dominating* in Quake 1 deathmatch with one of these. It was shocking, to say the least.
This might be the most 90s PC controller I have seen.